Toronto Renters Forum
Common Tenant Problems => Rent => Topic started by: Charlotte Mickie on September 21, 2021, 02:44:45 pm
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Tenants in our building get their increases based on when they signed their leases. Our landlord gave increases for 2020 that started (based on leases) in late 2020, continuing into late 2021. Then because the moratorium was lifted for 2022, he sent out a new series of increases starting January 1, 2022. The result is that several tenants have received as little as 2 months rent relief. Surely this was not the intention of the moratorium? Is this correct?
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The “rent relief” provided by Doug Ford is quite flawed, and unfortunately your landlord is right.
The rent hiatus was created in Bill 204, and for your convenience, here’s a link directly to the portion that applies to the Residential Tenancies Act:
https://www.ola.org/en/legislative-business/bills/parliament-42/session-1/bill-204#BK9 (https://www.ola.org/en/legislative-business/bills/parliament-42/session-1/bill-204#BK9)
The temporary rent freeze only applies to the “guideline” portion of the annual rent increase, and so above guideline rent increases (AGIs) can and will continue to be active in 2021. AGIs that have already been approved by the LTB will cause a tenants’ rents to rise in 2021, and in fact there was nothing to prohibit a landlord from applying for a new AGI in 2021. The fact that AGIs are not prohibited by this legislation is disappointing, especially given that AGIs are mainly a legal instrument available to landlords to gouge their tenants.
But the big problem is that the temporary rent freeze in 2021 isn’t going to equally benefit all renters because the benefit that a renter receives depends upon the month in which they normally had their annual rent increases…
Renters who usually received their annual rent increase on, for example, January 1st, will have already received their 2020 rent increases, and Bill 204 will spare them their Jan-2021 increase, so their next rent increase will come in January 2022 – the net result being that they receive two rent increases over those three years – they are completely spared the 2021 rent increase.
But compare this to a renter who normally receives their annual rent increase in December. They too have already received their Dec-2020 increases, and due to the “12-month rule” they wouldn’t have been eligible for another rent increase until December 2021, but as a result of Bill 204 they will receive their next increase in January 2022 instead – a delay of merely one month from the date that they would have received their next rent increase anyway. So they don’t really receive any meaningful benefit from the Bill 204 rent cessation at all.
This disparity of benefit based on the luck of when one normally receives one’s annual rent increase is inegalitarian, but worse, if the point of Bill 204 was to help renters by sparing them one year’s rent increase, then this approach fails for the half of renters who receive their annual rent increases in the latter half of the year.
It seems to me that a superior alternative would be to change Section 119 (“The 12-month Rule”) of The Residential Tenancies Act to add the stipulation that no tenant may receive a rent increase in 2021, and further, that their 2022 rent increase could come sooner than 24 months after their 2020 rent increase – that way everyone would fairly and consistently be spared one year’s guideline and above-guideline rent increases, and all renters would benefit equally. But in their wisdom, Ford’s cronies didn’t do it this fair way, instead choosing not to protect the half of tenants who have their rent increases in the latter half of the year.
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From the Landlord and Tenant Board website (https://tribunalsontario.ca/ltb/operational-updates/#rta)
While the rent freeze will end on December 31, 2021, landlords can give proper 90 days’ notice in 2021, for a rent increase that takes effect in 2022.